Les K Wrighthttp://www.leskwright.com
Tue, 03 May 2016 02:38:30 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.16Call for Submissions Bear Book 3http://www.leskwright.com/2016/05/02/call-for-submissions-bear-book-3/
http://www.leskwright.com/2016/05/02/call-for-submissions-bear-book-3/#respondTue, 03 May 2016 02:38:30 +0000http://www.leskwright.com/?p=826It has been nearly 20 years since the publication of Bear Book II. The bear phenomenon has exploded world-wide and worked its way into mainstream popular culture. Bear Book 3 seeks to bring up to date the international development and speed of bear culture, the ideas of bears, e.g. in the mass media. Bear websites and other cyberspace, bear films, bear music, alternative bear culture, e.g. Bear Your Soul at Easton Mountain, the rise of a bear party circuit, bear clubs and events, muscle bears, transbears, disabled, bears, bears of color, theoretical bears and bear space, among other historical and social topics. No fiction or poetry please.

Submissions and inquiries may be submitted to the editor Les K. Wright at leskirkwright@gmail.com. Submissions should be submitted as documents in Microsoft WORD format.

]]>http://www.leskwright.com/2016/05/02/call-for-submissions-bear-book-3/feed/0From Women in Love to Gay Liberationhttp://www.leskwright.com/2014/08/25/from-women-in-love-to-gay-liberation/
http://www.leskwright.com/2014/08/25/from-women-in-love-to-gay-liberation/#respondMon, 25 Aug 2014 15:20:13 +0000http://www.leskwright.com/?p=821Yesterday I finally finished Robert Hofler’s Sexplosion, about the taboo-breaking films and books of 1968-73. I remember all of them as they came out and I became of age during this time. I remember seeing Women in Love as an undergrad in 1972 with my then girlfriend Sheera. I was totally blown away by the nude wrestling scene between Gerald (Oliver Reed) and Rupert (Alan Bates). I was very much into D.H. Lawrence in my undergraduate years, reading him as secretly homosexual. After all the supreme union was between two men and this wrestling scene was a high point of the film. While called Women in Love to me it was all about men in love. I did not see any hint of gay men being masculine in the gay lib movement years I was living in. Gay activists tended to be more hippie-ish. I would soon discover the leather scene and read profusely from the small library of books on the subject. Larry Townsend’s The Leatherman’s Handbook became a Bible for me into masculine gay love. But during the years I was at SUNY Albany (1971-74) I did not know about the leathermen. At the time I thought being gay meant wearing dresses in drag, having pursed lips and being catty. It was only after I moved to Germany that I began to read the GLF literature, the plethora of books, like The Healthy Homosexual and The Gay Mystique, that were being published in rapid succession.

My only contact with gay men during my Albany years, when I was 19 and 20 years old was with tricks. I’d pick up a guy in either GJ’s Gallery or the Central Arms, a bohemian bar and the a gay bar, and my knowledge of gay men was very sketchy. Mostly I would wake up early and leave a note of thanks behind, and slip out the door before the guy woke up. I was really wary about getting more involved n any “gay lifestyle.” I don’t think I was aware of “gay community” at the time. These were simply random sexual partners I picked up. I tried very hard to keep y gay activities separate from my life on campus and in my fraternity.

But the nude wrestling scene was very important to me. It held out an image of two masculine men, who had girlfriends, but who secretly were wrestling with being in love with each. I also saw Midnight Cowboy and was completely devastated by that film. I read it as Ratso (Dustin Hoffmann) had a crush on the Jon Voit character. I did not understand at that age that Voit dressing up as a cowboy was a gay hustler’s costume. I’ve seen the film a few times now, and it blows me away what a brilliant piece of film-making it is. Later I would grow tired of D.H. Lawrence’s closeted homosexuality. I became downright angry with Lawrence after I’d discovered E.M. Forster and read Maurice. Now there was a story the way Lawrence should have written it.

The 1970s saw the birth of gay presses and the origins of a real gay library of books available for anyone to buy. AS I traveled in the US I always looked for the local gay newspaper, in Boston, New York City San Francisco, and I even came across GPU News out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I subscribed to the Advocate, which on those years was more of an activist newspaper with its notorious pink insert section with all the personal ads in it. I read publications out of London and the gay magazines out of Germany, like Revolt (German edition) and Du und Ich and Don.

One I came out all the way in Germany I read a lot of gay literature. T was mostly American and British books, both fiction and gay li stuff. It totally changed my perspective to read books that saw homosexuality as normal and natural and gays as the victims of a homophobic society. It was not the gay man who was the problem, but rather the sick and twisted thinking of heterosexual society. I became a very angry activist in Germany.

I kept up with what has happening in the US by reading the Advocate, GPU News, Gay Sunshine, and Fag Rag. I also read Guy Hocquenheim’s Homosexual Desire and Foucault’s History of Sexuality Part I, plus all the gay activist materials in Germany I could lay hands on. I discovered Rosa von Praunheim, who was trying very hard to bring American style gay activism as a socioloigcal phenomenon to Germany. I read his Die Armee der Liebenden (Army of Lovers), about gay liberation in the U.S.

In Germany gay aciivism was centered in the universities across the country. In Tübingen we had two factions, the theological activists, who were very conservative, and the left-wing activists, who took a more or less Marxist view of things. Lesbians were involved with the German women’s movement and did not at all interact with gay men. We had consciousness-raising meetings and we discussed taking political actions and holding regional meetings for the gay activist groups come together. We were a small band of maybe a dozen out and closeted gay male students. Germany was a big home to leather and my first experiences with leathermen came from tricking out of the Munich Eagle and a gay Kneipe/resaurant where Munich gay men gathered for meals. Can’t belibe I can’t remember its name, ouch.] It was place that Rainer Fassbinder hung out in, though I never met him in person.

In my early twenties I was very popular. It helped that I was handsome and had a swimmer’s physique from swimming a kilometer a day five days a week. I did not think of myself as being striking, which I realize in retrospect I was. I just know I had no problem, tricking with whoever I set my mind to seduce. I was very popular in the leather scene as well as in Tübingen and London. My favorite bar in the 1970s was the Coleherne in London’s Earl’s Court district. I would wander through the packed bar and narrow my focus on three or four guys I wanted to have sex with that night. And I would inevitably reel in one of those four, usually the first one I approached. Even though I was very nervous and dran a lot to overcome my shyness and nervousness, I got very loose and bold after a few drinks. I could mix and mingle, and I loved it. The Coleherne was my idea of gay heaven. My lover for the night was inevitably very handsome and masculine. I really liked English gay men a lot. They did not have the sexual hang-ups of American gay men. And German gay men were very matter of fact and down to earth when it came to casual sex. I always talked with my partners before and after sex. As a matter of fact, tricking became the rimary way I made close friends in the 1970s, once I got out of Albany and living in the twilight spce between being closeted on campus and out off campus.

The 1970s was a wonderful time to be young and gay. And it was even wilder when I got to the party that was called Castro Street in San Francisco in 1979. I caught the tail end of the pre-AIDS party years. And that’s another story.

]]>http://www.leskwright.com/2014/08/25/from-women-in-love-to-gay-liberation/feed/0Robin Williams and Demonshttp://www.leskwright.com/2014/08/12/robin-williams-and-demons/
http://www.leskwright.com/2014/08/12/robin-williams-and-demons/#respondTue, 12 Aug 2014 13:59:59 +0000http://www.leskwright.com/?p=818Hard news last night. Just before the start of the Monday AA meeting Matthew got a tweet saying that robin Williams had died of suicide yesterday. What a terrible loss, and yet how perfectly understandable. Williams battled with alcoholism and depression most of his life. I have too. I understand he was bipolar, just like me I battle with suicide to this day. And I shared something at last ight’s meeting I have never shared in an AA meeting before:

From roughly 15 to 25 years of sobriety I did not go to meetings. I copped a huge resentment at Boston AA and stopped going to meetings. I sponsored myself and I went slowly mad. During those ten years I was at Mount Ida College. After ten years at Mount Ida the place gave me a nervous breakdown. This led me to make decisions whereby I quit my job there, lost my career, decided to move to San Francisco and lost my house and eventually my husband. On the drive cross country from Boston to San Francisco I panned to commit suicide in the desert outside Santa Fe. But I was transformed by the desert, th energy around Santa Fe and I decided not to go through with it. When I got to San Francisco I rededicated myself to AA. I have gone to meeting a day ever since. I am always with a sponsor. I worked the twelve steps thoroughly with one sponsor in San Francisco, I sponsored other men. In the middle of all that I was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, which explained the clinical depression and the panic/anxiety disorder I suffered through during those years and still suffer fro to this day. I cling to AA to save my life now. It is what has kept me sane for the past nine years. I could not survive without the tolls, the steps, the program, and fellowship. For all the fears I have about other people, I force myself to walk through it all and to cling to AA as if my life depended upon it because it does. I am thankful I have never been compelled to pick up another drunk or drug since I originally put down my last drink and have up speed back I 1981. I know I can maintain physical sobriety, But the Program gives me spiritual and emotional sobriety too. I have remained alive thanks to the support and help of very many people and a sometimes shaky trust in my higher Power.

So when I learn of Robin Williams suicide, I think, there but for the grace of God go I. I am deeply saddened Williams’ demons got the better of him. I do know what a horrid struggle it is to live with alcoholism and depression, I know it well. It is a terrible loss of a great talent, someone who brought joy to millions, a wonderful actor and consummate comedian. But his talent and success were powerless to affect his demons. I have known too many friends who have taken their lives when they could not take the depression, the bipolar, the schizo-affective disordered illness any longer. As I say, still wrestle with depression and suicidal thoughts. And I am overjoyed at the new hope that Bear Your Soul awakened in me. I feel there is a chance for me to have a good quality life once more. It will be hard doing it from Cortland, but I have been plugging way, seeing out kindred spirits (I found one in Freddy Freeman, and I may have found others at Easton Mountain.) I have been adrift for the last several years with no idea what to do with my life. And I am serious when I say writing my memoirs has given me a reason, THE reason to not kill myself It has been the one big purpose I have had this past year.

Posted at Origins Coffeehouse, Homer, Ny

]]>http://www.leskwright.com/2014/08/12/robin-williams-and-demons/feed/0Bear Your Soulhttp://www.leskwright.com/2014/08/11/bear-your-soul/
http://www.leskwright.com/2014/08/11/bear-your-soul/#respondMon, 11 Aug 2014 13:44:35 +0000http://www.leskwright.com/?p=814As Bear Your Soul week unfolded I relaxed more and more into it. I think I made several friends. The most open dialogs happened at the morning AA meetings with a small circle of five of us—Rainer S., Max C. , Dave D., myself and Justin B.. The BIG missing piece was the sexual connection. I am impotent and without a libido as I found out the first day I played in the hot tub with a guy named Bob, who made himself scarce after that first day. Freddy Freeman and his husband Jay Freeman were amazing powerhouses. Freddy is full of vision and accomplished a major coup with this, the third (and first time in summer) Bear Your Soul. I so many ways it was like bing at a Billy retreat. The mix of men was great, young to od, men of color, otters to Girth and Mirth sized men. Plenty of hair. I fell in love with five different men, but did not have the libido to approach any of them. The facilities were very mich like Saratoga Springs, CA, the Billy Gathering site/propert. Easton mountain has a huge lodge with one very large meeting and performance space room, a dining roon, and serving area off the kitchen, a kitchen, and a he deck off the serving area. They now have a swimming pool nearby. There is a temple, where the AA meetings and kink play took place. They have a motel like lodge, two stories with ten rooms each floor, another large housing area with five bunkbeds, and a few other buildings and a garden and many hiking paths through the woods. Freddy and other residents like on the edge of the retreat center in separate buildings. I did as many of the massage and touch workshops as I could I got in al the hugging and kissing and caressing and massage that I could take in. I am absolutely starved for the touch of other men living here in Cortland. There were singing workshops and belly dancing workshops as well. It was all about fun and connecting with our inner selves, finding our Authentic Being. It was wonderful once I dropped my guard and my old prejudices. It did me a world of good to be among my kindred spirited brothers. It was a mmix between the early 1980s bears and what I experienced in Billy Community. I am so glad I went through the Billy experience and I am thrilled to get in so close to the ground floor of a shift in Bear Consciousness. This is where I was in my thinking when I dropped out of bear community in California and joined the Billies—I wanted to develop a program to bring hear circles and heart-centered community notios to the bear community. Freddy has accomplished this, on a very small scale. But it is a positive start. And we have plans and dreams to take it wider. Before I forget it was great to room with Martin Swinger, the grandfather of bear music. I brought Martin into the first ever bear fundraising concert at Mount Ida back in 2000, along with Ernie Lajoi and a guy we flew in from Seattle, for th second Bear Icons Art Exhibition. And Dave Diet, my friend from Ithaca, was the official photographer. I felt privilegded to be surrounded by old friends and so much talent. I had heard for years about Bearpalooza and finally got to hear them perform on Concert Day. The singers and songs were wonderful. It was very moving. We also had a second Broadway Bears impromptu concert, also fun and moving. Of course the biggest component from my subjective poit of view was being hailed as a community elder and gay/bear pioneer. On Friday night we had a sort of h=town meeting. I gave a brief overview of old-school bears from the 1980s and 1990s, which was a revelation to everyone there. They were amazed to find out how close to what we were doing at Bear your Soul paralleled the spirit and dynamics of the early bears. My presentation was followed by a spirited discussion, with several individuals coming to the front and speaking their experiences and truth. It felt like gay community before we got coopted by the corporations. And I ended with a call to draft a manifesto, which I will informally call the Bear Your Soul Manifesto. Freddy wants to develop Bear Your Soul and take it across the country. He already has accepted an invite to go to rural South Wales to take it to Great Britain. I was presented with a bear flag and a lot of folks signed it to commemorate the event. I elt deeply honored an thrilled; I also felt like it’s over due for people to recognize the pioneering work I did in / for the bear community I still have a very bitter taste in my mouth fior how shitty I was treated in Palm Springs. Those affluenza-infested queens need a wake-up call real bad. My group therapist there was so encouraging of me coming back to Palm Springs once my Disability gets sorted out. I cannot imagine any place I would prefer never to return to. (For a fuller account of my days in Pam Springs and the rest of my life, read my memoirs, currently in preparation.) So I want to end this blog on a very positive note. I look forward to co-writing the manifesto and I look forward to becoming involved in spreading the Bear Your Soul word and facilitating programs in the future. I am retired, albeit poor, so I am free to go anywhere any time as long as I am being financially supported. I thank Freddy and Jay for their amazing work this past week and I love Freddy for his spirit, energy, and vision. He is truly a remarkable individual and I thank him for giving birth to this new regeneration of true bear spirit. May it grow and thrive over time. Posted at Origins Coffeehouse, Homer, NY.
]]>http://www.leskwright.com/2014/08/11/bear-your-soul/feed/0Acceptance in the Answerhttp://www.leskwright.com/2014/07/18/acceptance-in-the-answer/
http://www.leskwright.com/2014/07/18/acceptance-in-the-answer/#respondFri, 18 Jul 2014 15:10:22 +0000http://www.leskwright.com/?p=808Dave cancelling on me, my trip to P’town was like a punch in the stomach. I have tolerated a lot of his eratic and irresponsible behavior over the years, but this really crossed the line. His life is as out of control as ever. It never gets better. I feel like I have been betrayed oe time too deeply.

And it leaves me feeling all the powerlessness of my life situation. I can’t make people like me or befriend me or hare their confidences with me. I feel very alone and isolated. And I see no way out of this. It seems like I am doomed to alife of poverty trapped in this small radius for as long as my car works. And then I’ll be royally fucked when my car dies.

And so, the answer, after crying tears of frustration and disappointment and fear is to turn back to The Program. For the last few days that passage has been rumbling around in my head. And I finally looked it up this morning. When I finally can’t take the frustration and fear and disappointment and bitterness any more, there is always a release.

In the story “Acceptance Was the Answer,” which was on page 449 on the Third Edition and is now on page 417 in the Fourth Edition of the Big Book we find: “And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place , thing or situation—some fact of my life—unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.”

There is another passage I cannot lay my hands on where the author talks about his magical looking glass. Like a pair of binoculars when he looks through the lens with a negative mind set the problems grow worse and worse; when he looks through the lens with a positive attitude the problems diminish and life looks good, better and better.

So AA developed at the time of positive psychology and Dale Carnegie and participates in some of the pop psychology of the era, that thinking positive thoughts creates a positive reality. It also taps into very deep and ancient spiritual truths about this.

When things seem darkest it always pays off to reach to some inspirational literature from AA and reframe it all as a recovering alcoholic. Sometimes I think of my childhood in East Syracuse when I lived in a four-family house and was surrounded by my cousins. My cousin Dave was my best friend. Our cousin Danny was a part of the gang, and other cousins sometimes joined in for board games or rough-housing or exploring the used car lot behind our house. Even with the fear introduced by my cousin Jimmy (Dave’s oldest brother), who incested me, it was a time of innocence and no clue of what the outside world would hold n sort for me. My Aunt Mona would say and my mother would echo her, sayig “You’re going to grow up to have a miserable life.” I had no idea what they were seeing in me and I just found it very annoying and stupid. But they must have been seeing something in me. I know later in life my mother told me she and my dad had figured out I was homosexual by the time I was five. I suspect this is what they were envisioning me being gay in a hostile and dangerous 1950s world. I was five in 1958. The Fiftis were a horrid time for nonconformists of every sort.

In was 10 in 1963 when my parents yanked me out of my rich world and moved us to Preble. I always resented that and we remained outsiders in Preble for the 6 ½ years we lived there, my formative teenage years. I feel like I am back in the Preble environment now that I am in McGraw. But back than I read a lot, I had school, I played in the band, I had a best friend and lover Phil Wetmore with whom I did everything. It was just the two of us as an inseparable pair. Phil’s older brother called us pansies, and he wasn’t wrong. Our 12-year-olds’ friendship was evidently more than us test friends, obvious to the adults n our world. But no one ever said anything about it otherwise. I had the Boy Scouts with Phil ad we went camping and hiking a lot. Phil and I used to go camping up on the hill along Route 11 at the foot of Preble Road. We would play games I the woods, take out clothes off and play sex games with each other. It was all somehow very innocent. It was our private life together. I had Phil for companionship and I had my home activities. I also collected tamps and had a couple dozen penpals during those teenage years. And I wrote very, very long letters. Gods know what I had to go on about, details of life in Preble and how wonderful America was.

We have discussed how we would likely have ended up like Brokeback Mountain staying in Cortland County and working for Smith-Corona, and me becoming an alcoholic, like Phils’ dad—if we had been born a generation earlier. I wonder if we would have lived together somewhere in Cortland County together. And now Phil has been married, closeted, had two girls, and gotten divorced and met up with his life partner Lee. They live I Houston, where Phil is now retired from teaching elementary school. They are coming to Preble to get married this September. I have been invited to the wedding, and I feel rather mixed about it all. Somehow it seems it should by rights be me marrying Phil in 2014. But our lives moved in very different directions and we are still friends by virtue of our shared past, not by anything we have in common today. It’s like being long-time family members.

The happiest time in my life were my years in Tübingen, with my first life companion/lover Denny Anderson. We lived a charmed life both involved with the university. Denny taught American Studies and I was a graduate student. We had a wonderful, warm, close circle of friends, mostly fellow expatriates and American fans. Our communal lives centered around music and drinking fine wines and smoking hash, and exploring Tübingen and environs. We were all coupled and Denny and I were the token gay couple at the center of the circle. We had parties and gathering at our lovely apartment all the time. We’d drive down to Ofterdingen and to hang out with Hel [German] and Barb [American] Bredigkeit, smoke hash and listen to music. And a Sunday night ritual was watching Tatort (Crime Scene),a police drama that has been on German TV for forty years and is still going strong. When I was getting DWTV and the German-language TV package on DISH satellite TV a few years ago I was back watching reruns of Tatort, in Fitchburg, in San Francisco, and in Eureka. It was an umbilical cord that tied me back to the reality of Tübingen days.

I was young and full of fire. I was very passionate abut left-wig gay politics and was involved with the iht, the local gay activist group. I had my circle of gay friends. I also went to the gay Pub 13 almost every night, usually ith Denny. And I often went home with whoever I could pick up. I had tons of sex, and gave no thought to how it might be affecting Denny. I lived in a fool’s paradise. But he was very tolerant and forgiving. And I was something of a trophy boyfriend, so my indiscretions were overlooked. I was the handsome young thing on Denny’s arm outside out close circle of friends.

I worked out and swam a kilometer very morning at the university pool, a morning ritual Denny and I did together. I was in excellent shape. After visiting the US in 1976 and going to a gay disco in Minneapolis I was horrified to realize I had a beer gut and everyone n the US had gym-trim bodies. I turned myself into a US clone when we got back to Germany. I could only get me waist down to 29” because that was the diameter of my hip bones. I had a swimmer’s grim boy with muscular upper body fro years of swimming. (I swam starting in Preble days.) I was definitely one of the hottest gay men in all of Tübingen, and a little vain and arrogant about it, in retrospect. I had no problem turning tricks. No one ever turned me down, In fact, I ad to fight the guys off at times. I certainly seemed to be living a charmed life and loved every minute of it, even as the dark shadow of unacknowledged alcoholism screwed things up at times. After all, I was just a heavy drinker.

Denny was twelve years older than me and was finishing up his PhD when we first met in Würzburg, the year before we moved together to Tübingen. I was a senior at Albany State and on my second year of study abroad at the University of Würzburg when we met. That was not much of a fun year. The best thing that came out of it was that I came roaring out of the gay closet and I met Denny, who had been y German teacher in summer prep school before the academic year started. He was a huge Bob Dylan fan and loved country and western music, especially the old=time stuff he had grown up listening to o the radio in Minnesota. He was a hobby folk musicologist and we went to a folk music club in Würburg frequently to listen to folk music from all over, a surprising amount from the US, a few blocks from our apartment in downtown Wurzburg. We also went tot eh movies. There was an art house theater not far from our pace and we saw international movies in the original with German subtitles. I saw a lot of Ingmar Bergman, and I remember seeing the Marx Brothers in German for the first time.

Anyway, I think of the wonderful times in my past and get very homesick for the life I once had. What I rally miss is having another Phil Wetmore in my life today. I think I could handle living in cow country if I had a partner, to form a twosome with and do stuff with. I am so lonely. And I am mostly resentful at Dave because I got cut off for the companionship I was looking to renew with him in P’town this weekend.

My sister is no boon companion. But at least when she is around the house is not empty.

So how do I accept everything as it is today? I live in my head a lot. I dwell less on the past the lnger I am here. I never thought I’d end up back in Cortland County. But I am not at the end of the rod yet. Who knows what is still in store for me? My therapist Emily is impressed at how much effort I put into circulating and reaching out and trying and trying to connect. Time takes time, as they say in local AA.

]]>http://www.leskwright.com/2014/07/18/acceptance-in-the-answer/feed/0Voice Male Anthology Published Winter/Spring 2014http://www.leskwright.com/2014/03/10/796/
http://www.leskwright.com/2014/03/10/796/#respondMon, 10 Mar 2014 18:24:57 +0000http://www.leskwright.com/?p=796Voice Male: The Untold Story of the Profeminist Men’s Movement, edited by Rob Okun, has been released by Interlink Books. It contains an extensive collection of essays and articles originally published in the quarterly magazine of the same name. I am pleased to have four original essays included in the collection.
]]>http://www.leskwright.com/2014/03/10/796/feed/0Hacked Site Revivedhttp://www.leskwright.com/2014/03/10/hacked-site-revived/
http://www.leskwright.com/2014/03/10/hacked-site-revived/#respondMon, 10 Mar 2014 18:20:34 +0000http://www.leskwright.com/?p=794This site was hacked some months ago by radical Kurdistanis (self-identified). Happily, my webmaster Craig Freeman was able to undo the damage and bring this site back into service. Many warm thanks, Craig.
]]>http://www.leskwright.com/2014/03/10/hacked-site-revived/feed/0‘Occupy Wall Street’ Issues First Official Declarationhttp://www.leskwright.com/2011/10/17/%e2%80%98occupy-wall-street%e2%80%99-issues-first-official-declaration/
http://www.leskwright.com/2011/10/17/%e2%80%98occupy-wall-street%e2%80%99-issues-first-official-declaration/#respondMon, 17 Oct 2011 13:09:55 +0000http://www.leskwright.com/?p=783﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿

Since the occupation of Wall Street first began on September 17th, the mainstream media has criticized the general assembly for its lack of a cohesive list of complaints or demands.

Not to be rushed by expectations of corporations and the elite they serve, the Occupy Wall Street action took its time fulfilling this demand.

On Thursday night, Occupy Wall Street participants voted on and approved the first official “Declaration of the Occupation of New York City.” It it reprinted in its entirety below.

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.